Stuff I Learned from Podcasts: Issue 1

I listen to a lot of different podcasts during my week. Here is just a small sampling of the different types of shows I listen to. I listen to podcasts about moments in history, podcasts about professional wrestling and baseball. I listen to podcasts about technology and about analog and stationery things. I even listen to podcasts about weird jobs that people have and I can’t forget all the great podcasts about random, esoteric things that strike my fancy. And with them all, I take notes in my trusty notebooks.

I thought it would be fun to post the notes that I take and pull out a few of the random things that I learned during that particular day of listening. Here is Issue 1 of Stuff I Learned from Podcasts.

The Weird Work podcast episode entitled “I write obituaries for the Economist” from April 5, 2018 featured an interview with Ann Wroe. As the episode title suggests, she writes obituaries for the Economist magazine. Things I learned:

When Stephen Hawking died, it was after they sent the issue to the printers but his obituary had already been written, about 10 years before his death. They call these types of obituaries “The Morgue” and there are about twenty people’s obits pre-written in The Morgue. They can pull these and update them to get them ready for print more quickly.

One of her favorite people that she wrote an obituary for was for Phil Sayer, the man who did the voice recording for the London Underground, the “Mind the Gap” recording.

She attempts to write all of her obituaries from the perspective of the person that has died. This makes each one unique.

The 1857 podcast is an analog conversation style podcast. This particular episode is called QWERTY and the main topic was mechanical keyboards and was released on June 18, 2018. Stuff I learned:

QWERTY keyboards are named after the first six letters beginning at the top left of the keyboard.

In France, they use AZERTY keyboards instead, because of the difference letter usage frequency in French compared to English.

The letters are staggered rather than being in straight columns because on the original Remington typewriters, the mechanisms would get tangled up so they staggered the key placement.

Finally, I listened to a podcast about the minor league system of my favorite baseball team, the Texas Rangers. Now the Rangers are not having a great year so far and their minor league teams are also struggling, especially at the upper levels. In the latest episode of Rangers on Deck, I learned that there is not a lot of help coming for the big club any time soon. But, hopefully by 2020, some of the best players in the system will be able to make an impact in Arlington.

My notes were written in a composition book from Dollar Tree, using a Pentel Twist-Erase mechanical pencil using Uni NanoDia lead in 0.9mm.